Eyes Wide Open

Have you ever had a conversation with someone whose eyes dart away from yours as they are talking to you? Or don’t even look at you. You wonder if they’ve noticed you or are wondering if they’re looking at the stain on your shirt or your hair that’s out of place. When was the last time you consciously paid attention to the movement of your eyes when you’re speaking to someone? Do you just make eye contact or do you connect? Recently, I was talking to my kindred spirit that got me thinking about a conversation we had on eye contact. I know a person’s gaze has weight, resistance, muscularity and clearly there are people who use their eyes well - you know them because they are your friends, family members, lover, partner, wife, husband. Their eye forces the question - does eye contact act as an intimacy regulator? They say the eyes are the portals to our feelings and thoughts, however, eye contact may communicate very different things to people of various cultures. I grew up in a culture where eye contact is much less common and considered less appropriate connected to strict religious beliefs similar to the Middle Eastern cultures. But I also know that I have been guilty of avoiding eye contacts with some people but had less to do with culture and more to do with emotions and feeling vulnerable. Being openly vulnerable takes a great deal of strength rather than holding on to anger which in my opinion is a sign of weakness. Most relationships are created from trust and trust is communicated through the eyes. When your eyes dart from side to side, when you glance at the floor or ceiling to gather your thoughts, you’re jeopardizing a listener’s trust in you and your message. While it’s true that the eyes are the windows of the soul and give away our emotions and our interest. I have come to understand and know that maintaining good eye connection is an art. There is a delicate balance to maintaining your direction of your gaze into the other person's eyes and breaking that contact for brief intervals. Too much eye contact can be intimidating, too little may imply a lack of interest or lack of self-confidence. But it’s surprising what people will find once they get a closer look at you and peer into the chamber of your heart; perhaps there lies a place of comfort you feel with looking them in the eye. And conversely, the more likely you are to feel shame about what others will discover when you open up to them, making it more likely that you will avert your gaze. It should be obvious that no amount of external fine tuning of your gaze can compensate for unresolved internal issues that need fixing, that’s why they have therapist, just saying. And am sure sometimes you can force yourself to make eye contact with people even when you don’t feel like it, but authentic eye contact is not about quantity, it’s about quality.

Maybe there really is something almost metaphysical about the way in which our character becomes etched upon them. People with kind eyes are almost invariably kind people. People with a twinkle in their eyes are almost always possessed with an enviable vitality. And those with dead eyes on the outside, tend to be dead on the inside, too. Thus the foundation of honest eye contact truly comes from within. Who knows, the more you live a life of integrity, the easier it might be to look everyone you meet in the eye, and do it with love and true human connection. Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" Henry David Thoreau